County Executive Tony Griffin:
Children are a shared responsibility; they
are out in the community more time than they spend in school. We
have collaborated in many ways. We have a combined financial
reporting system. The new FOCUS system (automated system for
financing and purchasing) is coming about because the county and
schools legacy systems from years past reached a point in their life
where they can’t be supported, they are 25 years old. The county
is heavily customized, but then when you get upgrades you then have
to customize the upgrades.

So early on, the schools and county made a decision not to customize
FOCUS but instead to change the business practices, not the
software. The problems we’ve experienced have been an issue of
staff learning different business practices; it hasn’t been a problem
with the software. We are working our way through and a year from
now, when people don’t remember the old system, things will be much
better.

Schools Superintendent Jack Dale: We
are redesigning business processes now for the human resources
component of FOCUS.

County Executive Griffin: We do a lot
collaboratively in the finance area. We collaborate on computer
learning centers and middle school after-school activities.

Kim Dockery, Assistant Schools Superintendent for Special
Services: SACC (school age child care)
teachers are used as substitute teachers. SACC teachers become
the first people called when a sub is needed, this system works well,
filling sub vacancies with people who know the kids and the schools.

County Executive Griffin: We’ve tried
to break down silos between agencies over the years. Years ago
we provided space in the South County building to register students,
a good example of the county and schools working together. County
staff at all levels doesn’t need permission to work together with
schools; they just do it and often times it is without engagement of
the CEX or Superintendent. Staff is empowered to work things out.

Schools Superintendent Dale: Another
example was using county transportation resources to move students to
home schools. To further this collaboration, I meet monthly with the
county executive.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Bulova:
The Superintendent /CEX have created a culture of collaboration that
has moved down to staff, empowering them to work together across
schools/county.

School Board Chairman Strauss: Also,
social workers collaborate across county/schools.

Sup. Hudgins: How are we measuring
this and how do we find the gaps? How do we plug collaboration into
the common problems we have? If we took the families in this county
and asked them how they were being served, would they say they are
well served on all sides?

County Executive Griffin: If there
are gaps in collaboration, the boards should let the
Superintendent/CEX know. How can we work better together? At all
levels every day, there is collaboration going on.

School Board Member Kaufax: I can’t
believe some of the things I’ve worked on were collaborative
efforts. Sometimes, these are two big bureaucracies and there’s
a vast amount of information and so we don’t know things
exist. We are less like silos than we think, we overlap in many
ways. We all have a lot to learn.

School Board Member Schultz: Shared
goals, different and mutual priorities. But who is looking at
areas of collaboration and determining the efficacy of this? The
auditor of the Board of Supervisors? Or should the School Board look
at this? As we enter into a discussion of the independent audit
function, what’s the measurement and have we met goals? We need
a bumper sticker version for the public, so the community can easily
and readily see the areas of crossover and jump between the two
systems.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Bulova:
Developing a better way to describe our
collaboration would be good, there is already a tremendous amount of
collaboration and even our staff isn’t aware of everything.

Sup. McKay: What do we do now that we
have this list describing the many areas of collaboration? How
do we communicate this information with the public? If the Board
of Supervisors doesn’t know, the public certainly doesn’t
know. We ought to be touting these successes, over 70 percent of
the households in the county don’t have schoolchildren so the message
needs to go out about the ways we work together for efficiencies.

The public at large isn’t aware of how much we work
together. How do we communicate these successes? What are
the gaps? How do we know if the gaps are being met? The most
successful thing we have in Fairfax County is the confidence of the
community that we are providing good services. This may need
more depth than just “bumper sticker” branding.

School Board Member Reed: This is an
unbelievable list of collaboration. We need something that flips
the list to show audience, need and goal. We need to show
efficiencies and effectiveness, what’s working and what should we be
doing more of. Community facilities, we need to discuss this
more.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Bulova:
That will be a discussion this afternoon.

School Board Member Schultz: There
should be a Web page that weaves what both boards do, and show the
same information on each site. If people saw on our respective
websites what we are doing together, it would be good.

School Board Member Evans: I am
pleased to see the amount of mental wellness shared services. I
do see some pilot programs that I’d love to see if they can be rolled
out to all our schools. On wellness programs, can they be rolled out
to all schools?

Deputy County Executive for Human Services Pat
Harrison: There is a whole level of
collaboration on prevention programs that isn’t even listed.

Sup. Foust: One thing I keep
coming back to, when looking at budgets, there are so many
similarities. Is it necessary for the schools to be doing some things
that the county is doing? Are there ways to cut down even more
on duplicative services?

Deputy County Executive for Human Services
Harrison: On a weekly basis, we look at
ways that we can work better together.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Bulova:
We need to be holistic about our respective
budgets because there is so much we do together and intersection in
collaboration.

County Executive Griffin: You may not
be aware of a number of items where there is collaboration because
they are being done without any request for funding from either
board. One area is recreation and parks. Elementary ball fields
are not a priority for the School Board but the Board of Supervisors
receives complaints that there aren’t enough athletic fields
countywide. Field maintenance was a problem, so now the county
maintains the school fields to support community use to reduce demand
for new fields. Another example: we have a county stormwater
program; we have taken over the schools’ MS4 program.

School Board Chairman Strauss: When
Schools Superintendent Dale joined the school system, there was a
School Board mandate that we had to move past the silos. We’ve
just gone through a major turnover on the board, and many of our
colleagues who have left cut their teeth in community
organizations. So there is a gap now of what has transpired in
the past, so today is an opportunity to hear how we work together
with the board. Also, both boards will be hiring new leaders
when the County Executive and Schools Superintendent retire.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Bulova:
We’ve had several waves of efforts to find
collaborative opportunities. The silver lining of the recession
is a renewed focus on how to work together. Collaborative
efforts have happened over the years because of an institutional
culture to work together. Sometimes there has been resistance
but the barriers have come down to a great degree.

Schools Superintendent Dale: There
are joint legislative efforts in Richmond. We speak with one voice.

Sup. Hudgins: I hope we get to the
end product which is accomplishment of “birth to graduation” clear
outcomes that we work toward as a goal. The individual sheets of
goals/priorities from the Board of Supervisors and the School Board
should be combined so we can see the continuity and shared
goals. We know we have fabulous staffs and we echo it every day
to our public, but we also have challenges. We can celebrate
accomplishments but can we say we intersected with that child between
birth and 12th grade and can we measure results?

School Board Member McLaughlin: There
are six new members of the School Board. We weren’t all aware of
all the ongoing collaboration, the fact that we didn’t know about all
of it means the public probably doesn’t know about it.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Bulova:
There is angst out in the community, are we getting
the best bang for our bucks? If people saw the list of
collaborative efforts, they would be comforted.

School Board Chairman Strauss: We have
challenges, and we have to meet them. We need to lay out where
we want to go and then we lock arms and move forward together.